Has Panini Lost Its Damn Mind?

Panini has lost its damn mind starting yesterday’s WNBA Rookie Royalty dutch auction at $30K. First of all, you’re only getting two cards per pack. Yes, one may be a Caitlin Clark rookie on-card patch auto, but it might also be an Angel Reese rookie on-card patch auto and, no shade to Angel Reese but, even at a 1/1 there was no chance you’d get anywhere close to your value back at that top price. 

Of course, the auction didn’t end anywhere close to the top, landing at a much more reasonable floor of $3K. So why did Panini start the auction at such a wild price? 

To launch at $30K you’re doing two things: you’re trying to catch people sleeping and sell them a product that won’t be anywhere close to a return on their dollar and you have completely taken the “hobby” out of this product and replaced it with gambling. 

Sure, every time you open a box if you’re looking to sell or trade those cards, it’s a gamble, but this was insane. And the fact that the final price was 1/10th of the starting number shows just how insane it was. This is going to be the dumbest sentence I’ll ever write, but, here we go: they should have started it at $10K and let it fall from there. 

Again, stupid sentence alert, but Topps sold the Topps Mercury: Victor Wembanyama set for around $8,000 and at least in that box you got 8 cards - two of them were autograph cards and 6 out of the 8 cards were all numbered to /99 or less. 

As I mentioned, ultimately, WNBA Rookie Royalty sold out just before it hit the $3,000 floor. Is that a fair price? Sure, maybe, when you consider the Caitlin Clark rookie auto market, I guess you can say it’s “fair,” but Panini didn’t have to embarrass itself on its way to landing at $3,000. 

If you’ve been paying attention then you know that Panini has been in a bit of a spiral since they lost the licensing deals and ultimately their ship has begun to sink - the prices have gone up, the quality control has been horrible, the print runs have gone way up, the number of parallels they now include in sets. It’s ridiculous. 

I collect WNBA cards and of course I am bitter about the price of this product and would love nothing more than having an on-card Caitlin Clark RPA or an Angel Reese gold Kaboom! but I would hate nothing more than letting Panini get panic money from me as the dutch auction dips. 

At the end of the day, we’re all on a race to the bottom. Viva la PSA 1s!

I know I made this prediction a few newsletters ago, but I still believe that a Cooper Flagg rookie card will top the $860,000 price tag that belongs to the most expensive Victor Wembanyama card ever sold. 

And I say that mainly for one reason: Topps is said to be activating their NBA license agreement as of October of this year, which means that we will get a Cooper Flagg fully-licensed RPA. If you watched the draft last week, then you saw the Flagg-a-mania as literally people from New Hampshire to Dallas were gathering to celebrate the worst kept secret in the NBA.

Imagine being like “hey let’s go to the American Airlines Arena to watch the Mavericks beat the Spurs 115-102.” We all knew the outcome! And still, people gathered. 

I may be wrong, but it feels like this first year of licensed Topps is going to have a pretty massive run and that should ultimately lead to a potential seven-figure Flagg card. 

Welcome to Jacob Misiorowski season

The Milwaukee tall boy is booming on the card market, and for good reason. He outdueled Paul Skenes in just his third big league start and in the day following that outing his Bowman 1st cards were absolutely crushing. 

A Bowman 1st gold refractor, autographed and numbered out of 50, sold on eBay for $6,500 just after he beat Skenes. 

I think there’s some real hype here. He looks plenty good and from what we’ve seen with the Skenes market, the pitcher market is beginning to make a nice comeback. The questions “can this hold up” and “will this hold up” of course are yet to be answered but it would be nice to finally see a non-Shohei Ohtani pitchers market start to creep up. 

Carlos Alcaraz, the greatest tennis player of all time?

Remember two weeks ago when I said that tennis cards were underrated and told you to set a reminder for 16 years from now because Carlos Alcaraz will go down as the greatest tennis player of all time? Remember that? 

Well, I’m not going to say that my hot take led to the sales of the two most expensive men’s tennis cards ever last week, but… maybe it did? That’s $222K for a Carlos Alcaraz 1/1 match-used racquet knob auto and $238K for an Alcaraz Golden Slam 1/1– that sentence felt like a Mad Libs.

Mad Libs are (ADJECTIVE)

Speaking of Mad Libs, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and found that you can buy lots of the 1970’s vintage (unused) paper books on eBay for anywhere from $7-$15. 

While I was there I saw that there’s all sorts of entertainment versions; everything from Bob’s Burgers to Stranger Things television show versions to a Richard Simmons version. 

The reviews for the Richard Simmons version are pretty (adjective). One user said they enjoyed using it while (verb). Another reviewer, however, said the (noun) felt (adjective). So, make sure you don’t use it as a (noun) and never use it while you’re (verb).

As I’m now contractually obligated to share, McDonald’s launched this week a 21-toy “Lil’ McDonald’s Happy Meal” set. If “Big” McDonald’s is too much for you, now you can own a lil’ McDonald’s. If you’re a medium-sized collector, sorry, Mac, they’ve got nothing for you. 

This post is (not) sponsored by Medium Moe’s Collectibles: “Medium Moe’s, actual-sized stuff for actual-sized people.”  

Have a wonderful week, people of all sizes!